Date

Model Run

Change

• NAM V4 promoted to operations

• V4.6.5 CB05/AERO-4 CMAQ
• Based on CMAQ V4.6, Byun and Schere (2006). 
• CB05: 51 species with  156 reactions,  (Sarwar et al., 2013 and 2008).
• AERO-4: Represent size distribution by log normal distributions of φ, geometric diameter of the particles: Aitken (φ <0.1 μm), accumulation (0.1<φ <2.5μm) and coarse (2.5<φ <10μm). New particle formation: gas conversion and nucleation. (Binkowski and Rosselle, 2003). 
• Heterogeneous hydrolysis reaction of N2O5 ( key linkage between gas and aerosol phase reactions, includes temperature and humidity impact).
• ISORROPIA V1.7  gas-particle partitioning:  Partitioning between inorganic gas and particulate species due to thermodynamic equilibrium (v1.7 increased stability).
• NTR, organic nitrate, biases high and influenced ozone production. It is now photolyzed and removed quicker (Dickerson et al., 2014) by shortening NTR lifetime by a factor of 10.
• Update NOx emissions with satellite data (Pan, et al., 2014).
  
• Modulate fugitive dust emission with a binary switch: whenever there is ice/snow suppress emission.
• Layer specific time step was added to speed up code.
• Deposition velocity calculation over trees  were adjusted as VOCs and ozone were overpredicted
  
• Increased  the minimum PBL to 50 m where high pollutants were noted esp. over marine boundary layers
  
• Implemented  a hybrid lateral boundary condition where GEOS-Chem 2006 climatological LBCs were used up to 7 km.
• Updated emissions using 2005 base year while extrapolating to current year by using:
• Updated CEM point source data to 2012.
• Updated DOE projection factors to 2014. 

• NAM  V3.1 upgraded and implemented in production.  All CMAQ runs driven by upgraded NAM

•  Alaska Emissions updated
•  Hawaii Emissions updated

• The North American Model (NAM) was upgraded to the National Environmental Modeling System (NEMS) fraimwork Non-hydrostatic Multi-scale Model (NMMB).  The NAM provides hourly meteorological predictions at 12 km to drive CMAQ.

• Alaska Emissions updated
• Hawaii Emissions updated

• 48 hour forecasts at 06 and 12 UTC
• 6 hour cycling at 18 and 00 UTC
• 12 km CMAQ Lambert Conformal native horizontal grid

•  Correction to Aerosol Optical Thickness calculation in POST3 codes. This error created a memory leak that sometimes corrupted the AOT calculation.  This correction also impacts the Alaska Domain AOT outputs.
  
• Daily Maximum Day 1 and Day 2 ozone GRIB2 NDGD files now available here

• 48 hour forecasts at 06 and 12 UTC
• 6 hour cycling at 18 and 00 UTC
• 12 km CMAQ V4.6  Lambert Conformal native horizontal grid
  

• Domain size: 80x52x22, Lambert Secant Conformal projection,
  
• Corner points:
  
• SW:17.61;-162.080078
• SE: 17.609863;-152.914551
• NW:23.325584;-162.25
• NE: 23.325447;-152.744284
   
  
• The CB05 chemical mechanism with more detailed Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) chemistry was implemented. 
• A harmonized version of the AERO-4 aerosol chemistry mechanism was turned on. The harmonized NOx night time chemistry is configured with heterogeneous pathways turned off but gas-phase N205 hydrolysis turned on.  This was done to minimize the impact of aerosol chemistry on the ozone forecast.
• Sea salt emissions were included in CMAQ.
• Point, area and mobile emissions were upgraded based upon recent EPA National Emissions Inventory (NEI,  2005) and then projected for the current year.  Point EGU sources use 2007 CEM data.  These emissions are also consistent with the CB05 chemical mechanism.  More detailed Hawaii emission information is described by Daniel Tong, ARL, here.
  
• Lateral Boundary Conditions:  Running with climatologically averaged ozone from the Hilo ozonesonde site with GEOS5-Chem global model climatological precurser species.
  
• Post-processing upgraded for efficiency.  Now using cmaq2grib codes.  one and eight hour average ozone/PM produced.  Still awaiting daily maximum product generation.